Trio

Hello, World:

Throughout my sophomore year, I had an opportunity to participate as vice president of public relations in an organization called “Liberty in North Korea.” With my South Korean roots and what little knowledge I gained from high school East Asian class, I was confident that I knew all there was to know about North Korea and that I was more than qualified to bring peace to the Korean peninsula. I soon realized I was dead wrong, however, in two different senses: one, my responsibilities merely included sending out press releases and selling cookies and shirts to raise money (which are totally honorable, yet not exactly world-changing) and two, there were a lot more to learn about North Korea, not from a completely biased, right-winged South Korean’s perspective, but from an objective third party’s point of view.

Growing up in South Korea with super-conservative parents who refused to utter a word of sympathy towards North Koreans did have a certain degree of influence over my way of thinking. In my wildest imagination, our fellow neighbors up north were either starving to death or cooking up their next plot for yet another military attack. I’ve lived through their attempted flight bombings, numerous submarine attacks, and armed quarrels at the border amongst countless other random “tantrums” that killed and harmed clueless citizens of my own country. I despised their reckless and immature actions filled with pure evil intents that benefited no one, not even themselves.

In my junior year in high school, I actually visited North Korea as a tourist. I got on the bus expecting rows of starving people and begging children, but came back with photos of me in picturesque locations and an amazing three-course meal. What did surprise me, however, was the attitude of North Koreans themselves. Whether they were tour guides, restaurant waitresses or “photo models” (pretty women dressed in traditional attire offering to take pictures with tourists), the civilians only seemed concerned with one matter: their mighty general. Commonly known as Kim Jong Il the dictator to the rest of the world, this dear general was praised and honored in every sentence they pronounced. He was basically a god, a holy entity that creates and controls all matters of life. At first I figured they might be faking it due to the hidden security cameras monitored by the government, but their twinkling eyes and solemn faces expressed nothing but genuine gratitude to the “one and only general who has provided them with such wonderful lives.”

Not a lot of people realize that the Korean peninsula is still in the middle of a war; we’re simply “taking a break.” Under such circumstance, it isn’t highly unusual to hear about military outbreaks and Kim Jong Il’s rant about how his army is going to destroy South Korea and the U.S., and it is definitely too idealistic to hope for a peaceful reunification at this point. Quite a few experts have been hinting at a possibility of a war, perhaps the very first high-tech nuclear war the world has ever seen. The method with which reunification takes place, however, isn’t currently within the boundaries of my interest; what I really want to analyze is the aftermath of reunification. As previously discussed in my recollections of the North Korea trip, the civilians of NK possess a certain mindset completely different from ours that messing with their beliefs would be like telling the most devoted Christians that God doesn’t exist – ineffective and a total waste of time. When the entire peninsula merges and the NK “general is god” civilians and SK “Kim Jong Il is a devil from hell” civilians are forced to mingle, what will happen? Would North Koreans be happier where they are now, completely clueless of the rest of the world yet perfectly content with what they have? Are we trying to muddle with their ideology because we, as the rest of the world, are simply too caught up with the idea of being heroes that we are completely disregarding the perspective of the NK civilians? Given that the U.S. wins this hypothetical war, would North Koreans who have been trained from birth to despise Americans reach their hands out and yell “save us?”

In the following weeks, I would like to analyze the mindset and the culture of NK civilians and the relationship between them and their leaders, measure the difference between their reality and what we are assuming it to be, and ultimately determine if reunification would be a successful process for all nations involved. If you are interested in this issue and learn more about it, visit the following blogs:

http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/2008/04/how-everything-began.html

This Austrian traveler gives a detailed travelogue about his trip to the hermit kingdom. In contrast to my trip that has been strictly censored and probably distorted out of reality, his recollections give a better sense of where North Korea actually stands.

http://friendsofkorea.blogspot.com/

This is a blog created by London-based communists, and thus gives a different perspective on the whole issue of North Korea threatening world peace.

http://nkleadershipwatch.wordpress.com/

Accompanied by reliable photos and official statements, this blog follows Kim Jong Il and updates the world on his whereabouts. 

Profile Post:

When discussing two-sided issues such as the Korean unification, most people tend to be biased towards one side or another, myself included, mainly because the people interested in the issue have some kind of connection to either side or is affected by the outcome of the issue. So it is always fresh to find an objective third party talking about the issue nonchalantly as if it were straight out of a textbook, a pure academic matter.

Such was the case with one blogger, more specifically an English instructor living in South Korea, who posts about his daily sightings and discoveries in a highly observant manner. As a foreigner, he offers a third-person perspective to the unification issue in the Korean peninsula and other political problems he detects in his daily life in Korea. Although he is neither a historian nor a professional in this field, he researches topics he is interested in and appears to be somewhat informed of the situation and background, which aid in providing evidence for his observations throughout the post. The frequency of his postings varies; it sometimes appears as little as two to three times a month, but massively increases to twenty or even thirty in the active days. As a result, he received lots of feedback when his blog was constantly being updated, but he hasn’t seen many comments these days.

His blog, titled “The News from Wabu-eup,” contains various sightings and issues spotted during his stay in Korea. Some posts draw heavily from his background research, yet others are purely observational. I found two posts that I was particularly interested in: “Anti Kim Jong-Il Graffiti” and “Mao Zedong, the Savior of North Korea.” The first article was posted on July 2, 2011 as a response to the news that a certain graffiti praising ex-president of South Korea, Park Jung-Hee, and scorning the current leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-Il. His tone throughout this post is very informative, and he doesn’t give away much of his reactions or feelings; instead, he simply tells us the gist of the news, with added background knowledge in the intro for those who don’t know about the current situation in North Korea. In the more recent post mentioned above, he summarizes the events of the Korean War, eventually drawing the conclusion that “The Chinese People’s Liberation Army entered the war… without them, one wonders whether or not North Korea would exist today.” He ends his thoughts with a quote from Andrew Salmon’s Korea Times article that gives Mao credit for saving North Korea. It is interesting how, although Salmon’s article is rather biased towards the left with many comments taking China and North Korea’s side and sneering at South Korea’s leftists, he manages to maintain his pacifist position by objectively listing detail by detail without an inch of prejudice detected. By carefully avoiding controversial words such as “winning” and “losing” and refusing to take sides by abstaining from the pronoun “we,” he successfully upholds his objective point of view.

As a whole, this blog provides historical insight to the current issues of the Korean peninsula. Although it does not directly address reunification, it is a valuable source for me and my studies in a way that it allows me to probe into the views of a third party not necessarily on either side of the debate. While his postings aren’t usually too rich in detail or scholarly, he glosses over relevant historical examples and tie them together in a clear, simple manner that is directly linked to his conclusions. My blog will definitely be drawing from more modern evidence and events instead of relying heavily on historical examples, and it will be somewhat more biased due to my background and prior knowledge. 

As a lazy, stereotypical 21^st century human being, I rarely go beyond Page 2 in a search engine to look for, well, anything (referencing to a certain “Is Google Making Us Stupid” post I had a chance to read in class). For this particular assignment, however, I had to go way beyond the usual limits of my attention span, mainly because it was so hard to find a non-journalistic blog entry written by a non-professional. I finally came across this amateur blogger, an American who lived in Korea for two years during which he married his Korean wife. Although the blog as a whole is simply a compilation of his daily thoughts, there was a particular post titled “On Korean Unification” that struck my interest.

Before going into detail of what his “voice” entails, it is important to mark the note at the bottom of the post that says “This was written for a job application.” As a result, his tone throughout this post is more formal than those of his other posts. He clearly paid more attention to his grammar and word choices than he normally would, which produced a post that was full of highly academic vocabularies and clean transitions. In comparison to his personal blog post titled “On Contentment, Part II,” which details his hardships over the past few years struggling with financial and family issues, this particular post has a very specific main idea and other metaphors and supporting evidences in a more structured order rather than “writing whatever comes to mind.”

It is interesting to see him using the pronoun “we” from beginning to end, as if he were part of the group being affected by the unification. He of course writes from the South Korean perspective, probably due to his experience in the country and his wife’s origin, and he takes a very strong stance against North Korea’s “overreacting” and “absurd demands.” He is very sympathetic towards the South Korean government, which he believes to have paid “gratuitous financial investments” for the purpose of “reaching out for the sake of reunification.” His attitude towards their conflict is similar to that of a family friend looking at a nasty marriage; concerned and troubled by his friends’ hardships, he tries his best to offer the most peaceful solution.

Indeed, he uses the marriage metaphor to a great degree to portray the relationship between South Korea and North Korea. “Many have friends in abusive, or otherwise dysfunctional relationships,” he says, “the reality of the relationship is that of a marriage in the 1950s: divorce is no solution, nor would it be advisable for the emotionally unstable children of the North.” He approaches the issue a bit cautiously in the beginning by simply sweeping over the general background of the situation with broad word choices (“normalcy,” “typical”, “cyclical”, etc.), but as he gets into the whole marriage notion, his inner “fatherness” comes to play as his voice grows increasingly firm on anti-divorce.

His ultimate solution for the troubling couple is to “take the moral high ground,” which is stated in an exceedingly idealistic manner. “Military preparedness and technological superiority must remain a priority, but in the end, a heart ready to make wrongs right, and ears primed for dialogue must always be offered,” he argues. While it may appear to be a simple communication problem when compared to the marriage analogy, this is a political issue that involves military actions, world-scale power shift, weapons and thousands of innocent citizens. His voice is very hopeful and naive, an attitude that tends to be frequently seen amongst political idealists who apply the most basic rules of communication to any level of conflict.

In the end, he finishes the article on a strong note by declaring that “making South Korea an island” will never be a sensible solution, and only a true compromise will make reunification take place. “Why, then must we seek to be right at the expense of our marriage to maintain a false position of strength and superiority?” he ends with a rhetorical question to which he has already given an obvious answer in order to make us re-think about what we believe to be right and wrong.

Overall, his emotions shift from sympathy towards South Korea and abhorrence towards North Korea to a high degree of hope later on. He definitely seems like an idealist, someone who likes to simplify matters into comprehensible analogies in order to make sense out of an otherwise complicated situation. While his views are definitely helpful in making us re-evaluate what ideals we are trying to protect by fighting for our own rights, his advice seems a little too general and impractical for current issues involving nuclear weapons and international politics.